According to AdvisorSites, roughly 85% of Internet users will find your site through a search engine, so improving your search-engine ranking can reap big rewards. Financial Advisor Search Engine Ranking Service (FASERS) optimizes your Web pages, registers and updates your site monthly with more than 75,000 search engines/directories and manually submits your site to top search portals. Each month, you receive a report, which tracks your rankings and confirms your registrations. The cost of this service is $400.
It comes as no surprise to us that AdvisorSites continues to win over demanding advisors in this tough market niche. BackOffice 4.0 increases functionality and improves usability. FANS, ACES and FASERS are value-added, reasonably priced service additions. The firm continues to garner high marks for its industry knowledge, service and reliability. If I were looking to improve my visibility on the Web, AdvisorSites would be my first stop.
WealthMaster Version 4.8.3
WealthMaster (www.wealthtec.com) is a financial planning program that doesn't get much press. The likely reason is that it packs more power than the typical planner needs. This program is designed to handle complicated planning techniques. If you have clients who plan to transfer pre-IPO property to grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATs), or if you would like to model the benefits of a GRAT versus those of an installment sale to a defective grantor trust, this MS Excel-based program is for you. Of course, it can also perform more mundane tasks, like integrated cash-flow, income tax, retirement and estate liquidity analyses up to 80 years in duration.
The latest version includes improvements in the following areas: Monte Carlo capabilities, input screens, graphs, the way tax laws are applied to planning scenarios and education funding, among others.
WealthMaster is not for everyone, but for those highly skilled advisors who target the high end of the market, it is a solid choice.
Joel P. Bruckenstein, CFP is co-author of the book Virtual Office Tools for the High-Margin Practice: How Client-Centered Financial Advisers Can Cut Paperwork, Overhead, and Wasted Hours (see www.virtualofficetools.net <http://www.virtualofficetools.net> for ordering information).